Whitmer’s claim of ignorance is puzzling.
April 23, 2020
More Questions Surface on No-Bid Contract and Gov. Whitmer’s Claims of Ignorance
It’s been two days since Gov. Whitmer canceled a no-bid contract for contact tracing from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to her campaign data vendor and a self-described Democrat political organizer.
Yesterday at a press conference and today on CNN, Whitmer claimed that she pulled the plug on the contract as soon as she found out about it.
Whitmer’s claim of ignorance is puzzling. On March 28, Whitmer and MDHHS Director Robert Gordon announced the launch of a volunteer website encouraging people to sign up to help with contact tracing.
The governor and health department are calling on medical professionals to help hospitals that are short-staffed that are treating patients for the new virus and residents with a background in public health to assist in contact tracing. – WZZM ABC 13 reported
On April 15, six days before the contract was canceled, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive and chief deputy for MDHHS, urged the public to answer phone numbers they didn’t recognize because it could be contact tracers calling them.
But upon announcing that the contract was terminated because the correct “process was not followed,” Whitmer also claimed “I don’t believe that much had even gotten started at all, frankly” as reported by MLive.
To recap: Whitmer announced an effort to recruit volunteers for contact tracing on March 28. Did the governor not inquire for over four weeks how the contact tracing program would work? And if no work had been done by the vendor doing the contact tracing, why was Dr. Khaldun urging the public to answer the phone for contact tracing calls on April 15?